Sarah Sherman’s Comedy Made Her Friend’s Mom Puke in a Parking Lot
I’ve seen Sarah Sherman’s comedy and let me confirm: Her show is not for the squeamish. “I don’t want to spoil anything, but it gets really horrible — it’s really loud and really unpleasant,” Sherman told Nashville Scene with a laugh. “But it’s so fun. I promise. It’s fun. Like, my friend’s mommy ran out of my show in Portland and was puking in the parking lot.”
Like Sherman says — fun! But what could go on in a comedy set that sends people vomiting outside the club? “I repulse people,” confessed the body-horror comedian. “I’m pushing them away, and then I bring them back with the identification point of laughter. Even if I’m experimenting with freaking people out, I’ve got to get them back with some laughs. It’s that repulsion-and-attraction thing.”
So repulsion is funny? “Everything has to be a joke,” she explained. “That’s the power of comedy.”
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Comedy fans who’ve never seen Sherman in person can get a sense of her weirdo act on Saturday Night Live, like in sketches where she reveals she has meatballs growing from her neck.
But that’s pretty tame stuff compared to the comedy in her live show. The material she develops that’s too weird or gross for SNL winds up in her summer act, so audiences should prepare to be disgusted. “I’ll do a comedy club in Wisconsin and get a family of four 70-year-olds who are like, ‘Oh, we want to go to the comedy club this weekend and see the brunette from SNL, that’ll be fun,’” she told the Nashville Scene. “And then they get there and they’re like, ‘What the fuck? This is not — I thought this was the nice woman from the show that we like.’”
Some examples from the Sherman show I saw in Wisconsin? Video of eyeball surgery (I think), massive amounts of pubic hair and an audience participation game called “Where Is the Blood Coming From?” Your mom may not approve either.
And Sherman gets that. To serve fair warning, she tries to match her promotional art to the show’s content. Her current tour poster, featuring eyeballs dangling from their sockets, decorative entrails and bloody brains, should provide a clue.
To be fair, Sherman’s fans return the favor with their own gross-out imagery. They’ll stop her on the street to show her the most horrific pictures on their camera roll. “Literally people will be like, ‘Oh my God, you love body horror — I sliced open my face when I fell off a tractor, and I think you would love it,’” she explained to the Nashville Scene. “Like, ‘Oh my God, you would love this picture of my face getting ripped off by a bear.’ And I’m like, ‘Whoa!’”
